At Biola University's Fall 2011 Commencement Ceremonies, Visionary-in-Residence Roberta Green Ahmanson calls students to rekindle a need for prophetic vision in their lives. Ahmanson talks about pitfalls in today's culture that dilute a true vision and encourages a new idea, a prophetic vision of the New Jerusalem reclaimed in hearts and minds.
Roberta Green Ahmanson is a writer and philanthropist whose public activities are focused on deepening awareness and understanding of the role of religion in public life, the importance of knowing history to understand the present, and the vital role the arts play in shaping human experience. Since 1986, Ahmanson has worked with her husband, Howard, in shaping the granting priorities of his private philanthropy, Fieldstead and Company. In that time, the Ahmansons have sponsored a number of art exhibitions in the United States and Great Britain including “Caravaggio: The Final Years” and “Sacred Made Real,” both at the National Gallery in London. Ahmanson currently chairs the board of directors for the Museum of Biblical Art in New York City. In addition to lecturing for the International Arts Movement in New York City, Ahmanson is the co-author with Paul Marshall and Lela Gilbert of Islam at the Crossroads, 2002, and a contributor and co-editor with Marshall and Gilbert of Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion, forthcoming from Oxford University Press.